Growing up in a divided society

by Sean Byrne

In this book, Sean Byrne describes the results of a study of the political development of thirty-five Protestant and Catholic schoolchildren between the ages of eleven and sixteen attending integrated and nonintegrated secondary schools in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The research maps Belfast schoolchildren's images of political violence, political authority figures, and their views about the possibility for peaceful change. Byrne's study was designed to explore the images of conflict among Belfast youth, to identify probable causes, and to explore the effects and ways, particularly in school settings, to resolve the political violence that has wracked Northern Ireland for so many years. The stories of the schoolchildren who participated in this study demonstrate that the conflict in Northern Ireland is more than a religious conflict; it is about economic, political, historical, and psychological issues. It is particularly an ideological struggle with a deeply felt attachment to the his